The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as, for example, an electrophotographic color copying machine.
As an image forming apparatus of the type mentioned above, there has been known an image forming apparatus equipped with an document feeder that feeds a document onto a platen and having functions wherein preliminary scanning for reading the document by means of a document reader is performed after the document is set to the predetermined position on the platen and before the main scanning for copying is made, and thereby recognizing the color of the document automatically and thereby selecting the mode matching the recognized color automatically and/or recognizing the density of the document automatically and thus adjusting the copy density automatically.
Such a conventional apparatus, however, has a disadvantage that the time required for making one copy is longer by the time required for one preliminary scanning.
An object of the invention is to provide a highly efficient image forming apparatus wherein aforesaid problem has been solved.